On Sun, 22 Feb 2004 14:05:08 -0600 "Christofer C. Bell" <cbell@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> This sounds almost like going in the opposite direction from Apache and
> XFree86. Whereas Apache and XFree86 have made their licenses unfriendly to
> Open Source (by becoming incompatible with the GPL), MySQL has gone and made
> their software unfriendly to commercial developers that are loathe to buy a
> commercial MySQL license.
> Would this be your interpertation as well?
nope.
MySQL AB recently brought in $19M worth of venture capital. one of the
things they need to do to justify that to the VC is improve their revenue
stream. changing the licensing of the client libraries appears to be an effort
to generate more revenue from commercial licensing, not an effort to force
more software to be GPL'd.
additionally, you need to understand that there are two different philosopies
in open source licensing (at least.) the GPL school is fairly different from
the BSD school. i am personally partial to the BSD style, although when i
contribute to a GPL project, my contributions are (of course) GPL. when
i contribute to a BSD licensed project, my contributions go under the BSD
license, and when i post my own code, i put a BSD license on it.
the MySQL license change is odious because it puts businesses between
a rock and a hard place -- they get four choices. one, don't upgrade MySQL.
two, pay for a commercial license. three, place their code under the GPL.
four, switch to another database.
and of course, if they don't notice the license change until too late, they
have a bit of a problem.
the real question is "what's free about this?". with PostgreSQL, you have
the "free means free" ideal of BSD licensing, you can do whatever you want
with a copy of PostgreSQL.
richard
--
Richard Welty rwelty@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Averill Park Networking 518-573-7592
Java, PHP, PostgreSQL, Unix, Linux, IP Network Engineering, Security
